Student lives lift new dean

The “job of a teacher is to give you the opportunity to figure out what you’re supposed to be,” said Sara Rivara, Mt. Hood’s new dean of humanities, who assumed the full-time position on Feb. 1.

Rivara began teaching at the age of 22. She spent most of her career at Kalamazoo Valley Community College in Kalamazoo, Mich., and greatly enjoyed her experience there.

“The thing I love most about it was my students,” she said. “I love my students, I love teaching. I love community college students.

“I went to an elite private school myself, and it was just a bunch of rich kids and me. And here, you’re (seeing), like, an 18-year-old guy next to your grandma,” she said, praising the broad diversity at community colleges.

Teaching English classes helped her connect with her students, she said. “You get students, and you learn their stories, and I fell in love with school as an English student.”

During a rough patch after graduate school where Rivara “got married, had a baby, got divorced and had to put my life back together,” she said it “was really my students that sustained me – just the fact that in a class, everyone can become friends, if you do it right.”

She drew from students’ energy and unique circumstances, she said.

“I feel like everyone in that classroom is an expert at something. You’re all coming into it with a life story that’s interesting,” she said. “I mean, I have a lot of fun, and I think my students end up having fun in my classes.”

At Kalamazoo, Rivara was the English and Transitional Studies department chair. She taught a full class load and handled the duties required of a dean. “I had to wear two hats at the same time, and that was tough, ’cause I was the supervisor [of] my colleagues, but I was also their colleague and that got a little dicey,” she said.

Given that administrative experience, Rivara is confident in managing her duties as dean at Mt. Hood. And, because of her tenure as a faculty member, she encourages instructors to voice their grievances.

“They (administrators) might not always agree with you, but you need someone who listens to you,” she said, describing faculty member desires. “Teachers need good administrators who have their back.

“I was really active in my union back home. I think I could be a good advocate for the faculty, which, in turn, is being a good advocate for students,” she said.

Outside of teaching, Rivara loves music. She started playing the piano at the age of 3, but considers her talent “really embarrassing.”

Instead, it’s her voice that shines. In Michigan, she sang for the First Congregational Church of Kalamazoo, was part of a professional quartet, and sang with an opera company and a symphony.

“I’ve never not sung,” she noted. While not yet affiliated with any singing projects in the Pacific Northwest, she said she might get involved with one. “Portland is a big choir town, so we’ll see.”

Rivara is a published poet. A number of her former students are also publishe

 

d, and some of them are award-winners. “That’s not my doing,” she said, deflecting any credit.

As a department head at Mt. Hood – following Eric Tschuy and Jim Kline, who recently served as interim Humanities deans – she feels confident she can ably serve both faculty and students here.

“I believe in collaboration, and I believe in communication,” Rivara said. “I’m here to be of service to others. I absolutely understand, coming from faculty – the weird relationship faculty and administration has. I’m hopeful that I can be good to the faculty (and) be good to the students.”